Saturday, December 13, 2008

Sages and Legends in Iceland are full of trolls, elves, outlaws, spirits, afturgangas (zombies), bloodthirsty women, viking kings and gods and heroes from the North-German Mythos.

Especially elves are treated with great respect. Roads are diverted specifically around famous elven hills. For example the road between the Kópavogur sporting facility and church is called Álfshólsvegur (Elfhillroad). In Grundarfjördur between the houses numbered 82 and 86, there is a standalone elf rock. So the hidden people live at Grundargata 84! (source)

Economist Peter Schiff (advisor of Ron Paul during his election campaign), had warned in 2006 under much derision from the neo-cons and others that the US was going towards a recession, based on the imbalance between consumption/loans on one side and production/saving on the other. Schiff spoke in March 2008 about a possible coming problem. During a news broadcast of CNN International on 24 november 2008 an interview with Schiff is suddenly interrupted because of "technical difficulties".

Sunday, December 7, 2008

In my first investigations, I've used this word (non-peakers) because I thought some people had peak experiences and others didn't. But the more data I collected and the more capable I became in posing questions, I realized that the longer the more of my subjects began to share their peak experiences. In the end I began to develop the habit to expect that everyone had peak experiences, and I began to be very amazed when I met someone who couldn't share any. Because of this experience I began to use the word "non-peaker" not to describe the person not capable to have peak experiences, but more so the person who fears them, represses them, denies them, turns away from them or "forgets" them.

Every person whose character structure (or belief system or way of life) forces him to be exclusively rational or 'materialistic" or mechanistic, has the tendency to become a non-peaker. That means, such a view on life turns the person in question to be disposed to regard peak and transcendental experiences as a sort of insanity, a complete loss of composure, a realization of being overwhelmed by irrational feelings, and so on. The man who is afraid to become insane and thus clings desperately to to balance, self-control, reality, and so on, seems to be shook up by peak experiences and tends to fend them off.

For the compulsive neurotic, who organizes his life around the denial and control of emotion, the fear to be overwhelmed by a feeling (what is explained as a loss of control) is enough to mobilise his entire means of destruction and defense against the peak experience.

I have one example of a very convinced Marxist who denied a real peak experience - which means she turned away from it - and in the end classified it as a sort of wonderful but unimportant something that happened, but could best be forgotten, because this experience was in contradiction with her materialistic-mechanical belief system.

I've met some non-peakers who were ultra-scientific, which means, adherers to a nineteenth century view of science as an unemotional or anti-emotional working, that is entirely controlled by logic and rationality, and who were of the opinion, that everything that wasn't logical or rational, had no respectable place in life.

(I suspect that extremely 'practical', which means exclusively means-oriented people, will also seem to be non-peakers, because such experiences do not make money, bake bread or cut wood. This is also the case for people led extremely by the outward, who barely know what goes on inside them. Maybe people who are narrowed to the concrete too.) Finally, I would like to add, that in some cases I have not found a single explanation for some non-peakers.

The relation between the prophet and the faithful, between the lonely mystic and the (completely extreme) religious organisatory man is often a relation between peaker and non-peaker. Lots of theology, lots of verbal religion throughout entire history and world can be considered as the more or less futile attempt to verbalize the original mystical experience of the original prophets in words that can communicate, and in formulas and symboli!cal rituals and ceremonies.

In short, organized religion can be seen as an attempt to convey peak experiences to non-peakers. In general we should now expect, that this must be a futile attempt, at least in so far as it concerns most of humanity. The peak experiences and their reality of experience are usually not conveyable to non-peakers, at least not with words alone and definitely not by non-peakers. What happens to a lot of people, especially by the ignorant, the undevelopped, the naive, is they simply concretize all symbols, all words, all images, all ceremonies, and turn these, rather than the original revelation, through a process of functional autonomy to the sacred and holy activities. Which means: it is simply the idolatry (or fetishism) that is the curse of every religion. In idoletry the essential original meaning is lost so much in concretization, that these become hostile against the original mystical experiences, against mystics and prophets in general, against those people that we from our current viewpoint should call the truly religious. Most religions have ended with a denial of, and the assuming of a hostile attitude towards the source of self, where they were originally based on.

If we study the internal history of most world religions closely, we shall see, that each one very soon shows the tendency to divide itself in a left wing and a rgith wing, which means, in the peakers, the mystics, the transcendentals or the personally religious people on the one hand, and on the other hand the ones that concretize religious symbols and metaphors, that rather venerate little pieces of wood than what the objects represent, the ones that take word formulas literally and thereby forget the original meaning of these words, and, maybe most important, the ones who see the organization, the church as primary and more important than the prophet and his original revelations. These people will, as many organisatory people that become leading figures in every complicated bureaucracy, be non-peakers than peakers.

We can say the same of professional philosophers, who have the endency to divide in right and left wings. Most official, orthodox, contemporary philosophers are the equivalent of the legalizers, who reject the problems or data of the transcendental as 'meaningless'. Which means, they are positivists, atomists, analytics who are more interested in means than goals. They rather sharpen tools than discover truths. These people are diametrically opposed to another group of contemporary philosophers, the existentialists and phenomenologists. These are the people who tend to fall back on the expeirence as the primary data that everything starts with.

In the past years it has become very clear that certain means, called 'psychedelic', especially LSD and Psylocybine, give us a certain possibility to control the giving of peak of experiences in this area. It seems that these means often bring about peak experiences under the right circumstances (set & setting), so we perhaps don't have to wait until they happen coincidentally. Perhaps we can, when we want, under religious or non-religious circumstances, bring about a stand-alone, personal peak experience and observe this. Perhaps then we would be able to study the experience of enlightenment or revelation at the moment of her birth. And what is even more important: perhaps we could share these means, and perhaps hypnosis could be used as well to bring about peak experiences in non-peakers, with a core-religious revelation, whereby the divide between these two separated halves would be bridged.

What I have said comes down to this: that the data of peak experiences allow us to talk about the essential, the intrinsic, the fundamental, the deepest, religious or transcendental experience as a phenomenon of completely particular and personal nature, that barely can be shared (except with other 'peakers'). As a result the entire envelopment of organized religion - buildings and specialized personnel, rites, dogmas, ceremonies and such - are secondary to the 'peaker', additional and of doubtful value in relation to the intrinsic and essential relgious or transcendental experience. Maybe all of this can even be damaging. From the perspective of the peak experiencing man everyone has their own particular religion, that he develops from their own particular revelations, in which his own particular myths, symbols, rites and ceremonies are revealed. These can be of the deepest meaning for him personally, and still yet completely idiosyncratic, which means, for somebody else of no meaning whatsoever. To say it even more simply: every 'peaker' discovers, develops and maintains their own religion.

Basically it is possible through a right understanding to transmute means-activities in goal-activities, to ontologise them: randomly place in the viewpoint of the eternal, to see the holy and symbolic in and through the individual semblance of the here-and-now. By which factors is this prevented? In general by the powers that already diminish us, pathologise or regresse us, for instance ignorance, pain, disease, fear, 'forgetting', dissociation, redirection to the 'concrete', neurotisation and so on. That means, having no core-religious peak-experiences can be a 'lower', lesser state, a state where we are not 'functioning completely', are not at our best, not completely human, not integral enough. If we are healthy and well and correspond adequately to the concept of 'human', experiences of transcendence should principally be a daily phenomonen.

Maybe that which initially appeared to me as a paradoxical, can now be seen as an evident, completely unsurprising fact. I've noticed something that never got through to me, namely that orthodox religion could very well mean a desacralisation of a big part of life. It can lead to a dichotomy of life in the transcendental and profane-secular, whereby he separates these in time and space, conceptually and empirically. This is in obvious contradiction with the facts of peak experiences. It is even in conflict with the traditional religious representations of mystical experience, not to mention the experiences of satori, nirvana and other eastern forms of mystical and peak experiences. These all agree that the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular, are not divided. Apparently one of the dangers of the legalist and organisatorial views of religion is that they can lead to the suppression of natural peak, transcendental, mystical or other core-religious experiences, so it is less likely that these take place. Which means, there can be a negative correlation between the amount of religious organisation and the frequency of religious experiences. (Also see Jung in his autobiography "The original sin of religion was, so it seemed to me, that it tried to be ahead of experience... and confirmed my conviction that in religious matters, only experience counted.")

Conventional religions can even be used as defense and deterrent against the shocking experiences of the transcendental. Familiarity makes it unnecessary to be fully consciously thinking, feeling, living, deeply experiencing. Words can be casually repeated, without touching the interpersonal depths, regardless of how true or beautiful their meaning may be. This goes for any symbolical act whatsoever, for instance greeting the flag, or for ceremonies, rituals or myths. They can be extraordinarily important for their effect on the person and, for this person, on this world. But this is only true in so far he experiences them truly. Only then do they have meaning and effect. (translated from dutch, should have checked scribd earlier)

General Quotes:If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.

You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Victory depends on whether or not a duelist has the courage to fight until the bitter end.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within-and make the point: This can be done.

In 24 hours, through the collective consciousness resonating internet...

I talked to my folks in Thailand, talked about entheogens with a dude from Finland, got great advice from someone in Australia, got my magickal ass kicked in the best way by an American, philosophized with a New-Zealander, and jammed on the electric guitar along with a Canadian!

Zoe7 is a multi-dimensional synergy personality cluster who inhabits the body and mind of consciousness researcher, Joseph Marti. (The other five personalities are: Max McCullan, Ebhrious, Jiebro, Kzark Prestidius, and Lee Steel.) His book, Into The Void Exploring Consciousness, Hyperspace and Beyond Using Brain Technology, Psychedelics and Altered-Mind States, depicts Marti’s experiments with mind machines, entheogens, and psychological time travel, how the Zoe7 cluster came to be, as well as new theories on parallel universes and probable Earths, the mechanics of reality and existence, and the mind of God.

disclaimer: combining psychedelics is not advised for the beginners or intermediates, and should be done only a few times a year. I've talked to one person who claimed his entire "lightbody was burned up" after doing much (insane) combining and his immune system was so out of wack the doctors didn't know what to do with him.

My local library has a screwy search function in their computer database and I didn't find the English version books of him on the puter, but only the dutch. I hate reading classics translated, they are poor man's versions. Especially the translated Finnegans Wake, while skimming through it, it seemed to me like some Joyce-lover's fetish to translate an unreadable book and making it even more incomprehensible while draining the fun out of it. I mean this book made less sense to me in "my native language" than in "English", ha! But then I went oldschool and just looked in the English novel section shelves and simply found it. Here's to technology!

Joyce's language is amazing, he spent most of his adult life in many parts of Europe and I certainly recognize a lot of influences from other languages and dialects including occasional dutch/flemish, and this must be the best book a player-with-language like me could ever hope to find, oh universe why did ye wait so long to share this with me. And the universe replyeth: "all ye had to do was go to the English novel section, oh and fuck computers, teehee."

From the introduction, first line:The first thing to say about Finnegans wake is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable. In order to pay it the attention it so impertinently and endlessly demands, the reader must forego most of the conventions about reading and about the language that constitute him/her as a reader. The advantage to be gained from doing so is considerable; the conventions survive but they are less likely thereafter to dwindle into assumptions about what reading or writing is. (and this is followed by 43 pages of much less interesting mental masturbation, which I gladly ignore cause I don't need someone to tell me how to fucking interpret something, the book begins:)

The linguistic drugging in excerpts:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.Sir Tristam, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to LaurensCounty's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though vennisoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. (comics version!)

sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetabsolvers!

Arms apeal with larms, appaling. Killykillkilly: a toll, a toll.

But waz iz! Iseut! Ere were sewers!

Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce coem to a setdown secular phoenish.

before joshuan judges had given us numbers or Helviticus committed deuteronomy

a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o'toolers clittering up and tombles a'buckets clottering down.

What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday this municipal sin business? Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive ages that shebby choruysh of ankalified muzzlenimiissilehims that would blackguardise the whitestone ever hurtleturtled out of heaven. Stay us wherefore in our search for tighteousness

Heed! Heed. It may half been a missfired brick, as some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back promises, as others looked at it. (There extand by now one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same).

But so sore did abe ite ivvy's holired abbles, (what with the wallhall's horrors of rollsrights, carhacks, stonengens, kisstvanes, tramtrees, fargobawlers, autokinotons, hippohobbilies, streetfleets, tournintaxes, megaphoggs, circuses and wardsmoats and basilikerks and aeropagods and the hoyse and the jollybrool and the peeler in the coat and the mecklenburk bitch bite at his ear and the merlinburrow burrocks and his fore old porecourts, the bore the more, and his blightblack workingstacks...

His howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did shake. (There was a wall of course in erection) Dimb! He stottered from the latter. Damb! he was dud. Dumb! Mastabatoom, mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute is all long. For the whole world to see.Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie? of a trying thirstay mournin?

Finiche! Only a fadograph of a yestern scene.

So that meal's dead off for summan, schlook, schlice and goodridhirring.

"The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences."Hagbard Celine, Leviathan

Yesterday at around midnight. There was shouting in the street. Looked out the window, suspected it was a drunk who was just shouting incoherently (which was the case). He kept at it though, so I looked again. Oh shit! The building across the street is on fire. Not a big fire yet but through the metal gate I could see it burning. Hey what's that I see, MY CAR IS PARKED IN FRONT OF IT! :p I've never been downstairs so quick lol. I quickly moved it so the fire trucks could get closer to it and you know, don't break my windows to put their hose through (that wasn't fun to type, lol). They were already arriving, 3 firetrucks, the sight of which made me smile like a little boy. The fire was out immediately, either it was an electrical malfunction of some sort or more nefarious stuff. Cause the cops were called and took pictures and investigated the scene along with some fire marshalls for at least an hour. That's all for regional news, back to you Kathy.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

to eat them"At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos."Timothy Leary

"Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."Terence McKenna

Hey Dutch politicians...Two Commandments for the Molecular Age:Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow men.Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his or her own consciousness.

"The fungi were placed on a table by the pool, I picked on up, it tasted even worse than it looked bitter, stringy. I began to feel strange, mildly nausious, detached. Everything was quivering with life, even inanimate objects. I gave way to the light and discovered a sea of possibilities, other realities. By that swimming pool I learned more about the mind than I had in 15 years as a diligent psychologist."Timothy Leary

"People use the word 'natural'... what is natural to me are these botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system. What I consider artificial is 4 years at Harvard, and the Bible, and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the sunday school teachings."Timothy Leary

"Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen..."Alan Watts

"Everybody knows this who has to do with this stuff (psilocybin), Gordon Wasson, Richard Shulties, Albert Hofmann, the giants know that this stuff is animate. This is not a drug. It’s something that’s disguising itself as a drug in order not to spread alarm."Terence McKenna

The mushroom speaks, and our opinions rest upon what it tells eloquently of itself in the cool night of the mind:

"I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil.

These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections that the number in a human brain. My mycelial network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality all my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across space and time.

The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web but the collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore-forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence.

How the hypercommunication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to man. But the means should be obvious: it is the occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and man as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.

Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them.

I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our starswarm are heir to."

"But Doctor, what is Dogma?" "Well my dear, dogma is acting as though you possess absolute truth, even though you have no real facts to support your propaganda. Some words which are similar are -- dictatorial, stubborn, egotistical, bigoted, fanatical, intolerant, opinionated, overbearing, arrogant, stupid, despotic, and the list continues. But of course my dear, these terms do not apply to you."

WHEN YOU GO OUT FOR DINNER ORDER DOGMA

WHEN YOU GO OUT ANYTIME ORDER DOGMA --BECAUSE YOU WILL GET IT ANYWAY

AT LEAST YOU WILL FEEL IN CONTROL

If someone spots you going into dogma withdrawal (that is doing something which is a lot of fun) you will be provided with a remedy - be it sympathy - advice - or electro-shock therapy.

Shut it off! Now I can see how your view is much more valid and sensible than mine!!

Dogma Speed

Dogma travels faster than the speed of light. If the speed of dogma transmission becomes sloweer than the speed of change then a nervous breakdown can occur. When this happens frantic attempts are made to find a fresh connection, such as a psychiatrist, who is a specialist in dogma breakdown and withdrawal. OR YOU CAN --- Watch TV. Have an affair. Go on a shopping spree. Throw a war. Get sick. Provoke an economic disaster. If that is not enough, you can start your own counter culture or if you're really brave you can start your own religion.

Intelligent Dogma

The most advanced DOGMA JUNKIES are of course the educated addicts. They "CHOOSE" their -- DOGMA -- carefully, not knowing of course that they're junkies. They evaluate themselves and others in terms of the logic-reason-justice - originality and obvious truth of their DOGMA. Their customary paraphernalia includes style, value, convention, common sense, good taste and consensus.

The CIA

International dogma protection -- this agency protects us against the dogma of other nations. According to some TV programs the CIA will use any device conceivable to protect us from the insidious peril which is encroaching --------- (Note: The publisher removed the remainder of the sentence.)

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sanctuary is a series sure to have some interesting symbolism in it featuring Amanda Tapping, Stargate's Samantha Carter as Dr. Helen Magnus, an English (supposedly :p actors really need to stick to their own damn accent) doctor specializing in xenobiology and cryptozoology who seeks to help 'abnormals' by running the titular 'Sanctuary for All'.

She recruits Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne), a forensic psychiatrist, to assist her in reaching people and gaining their trust so they can be helped. Other Sanctuary staff include Henry Foss (Ryan Robbins), a weapons designer & computer expert; and Ashley Magnus (Emilie Ullerup), Helen's daughter and self-proclaimed monster hunter.

I've seen three episodes, and I need to check those webisodes too which is how the show started (checking the first, woohoo Rodney McKay and more SG Atlantis folk, geez even the credits are better! Check the webisodes first! The show itself is not that great IMO). From the wiki: Although the show's creators initially said that the deal with the SciFi channel would not have an impact on the web access of the series, the webisodes are not currently available. Incredible & Duh... Every New Battlestar Galactica fan knows how well the SciFi channel gets along with webisodes. But they are on YouTube, which btw has switched to horrible black border widescreen, great, I guess I didn't hate the internet enough yet.

Speaking of BSG, Emilie Ullerup was in that too, in Sanctuary she's Monster Hunter Ashley Magnus and the following must be the hottest stargate symbolism I've seen yet :p

From the vid: "True story about a man who's been saving hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Big Macs from McDonalds for over 18 years... and they look EXACTLY the same!" (well, more or less)

Here's a test: Stop eating fast food for a month and eat healthy instead (this will make you feel good - as opposed to only your taste buds), then try to eat fast food again after that month and see how your body reacts the same & next day. I haven't eaten "fast food" in forever... cause it's not food.

"The economic mess that has been unfolding the last few months is not, as the right fear and the left hope, an organic collapse of the global capitalist system. But rather it is, as so many so-called financial crises before it, a scam perpetrated by what Lincoln used to call the "money power." The goals are to capture other lucrative businesses, reduce government and its ability to constrain its hegemony over capital, and to reduce union membership by creating such dire economic circumstances as to make unions powerless to save their members from hardship.

What we are experiencing is not the fall of the bourgeoisie, but its ascendancy to dictatorship. It is a charade, it's class war waged by a confidant, victorious bourgeoisie, not one on the verge of imminent ruin. In fact, the economic failure of the bourgeoisie, as things are currently constituted in the West, is an impossibility."

Monday, November 24, 2008

I watched the first 4-episode OVA of Dominion Tank Police. A 2-volume manga written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed) and turned into 3 OVA's.

Set in the fictional city of Newport, Japan (I partly grew up in Newport, Belgium ;p), in a future in which bacterial air pollution has become so severe that people must wear gas masks when outdoors (more about this later in the post), the series follows a police squadron that uses tanks.

Here is a shot of Leona and her boss in her little tank on the left, made from the scraps of her boss' tank which she wrecked ;p, and futuristic Newport on the right, Mushroom building and everything.

The first OVA was funny, action-packed and as usual in anime you barely know wtf is going on! (in a great way!) Without spoiling everything (barely), and after checking out this White Stripes Music vid set to some cool animation from the series, let's check out how we go through the stargate in this story:

Buaku is the super criminal the Tank Police was formed to fight, specializing in bank robbery and general mayhem. He leads a gang, but appears to be backed by unknown individuals. In the OVA Buaku's true origins are revealed in that he was a "prototype test dummy" for the Greenpeace Crolis project, who escaped destruction when government agents raided the lab and destroyed everything except for encoded data disguised as a nude portrait of himself.

Doctor talking about the Greenpeace Project: "The world is contaminated by the bacterial cloud, so this project is assumed national, no international, not to say global importance. We have already succeeded in creating a prototype lifeform capable of surviving in bacterially contaminated air, on the physical side then the project is incontestably a total success. The challenge we now face is to create a mental framework, completely human in form. At the moment the brains in our specimens exist, but they exist up till now only in a state I would term cognitive sterility... What we call their brains are made of microchips, replicas of adult human brains. We shall have the privilige of imprinting experience on them. 'Till now only God has known what it is to create human intellect from nothing. That's our task here, to create human intellect from nothing."

Buaku is helped by the Puma Twins, Anna Puma & Uni Puma who are a pair of tall, beautiful android catgirls (;p) who were created as "love dolls" to be marketed for profit, but they developed beyond this superficial programming and became criminals, joining forces with Buaku.

At the end of the first OVA, Buaku and the girls come upon a place where Buaku is led by his consciousness after having dreams featuring this:

Buaku's "dream" leads him to an abandoned lab...

"I was right, I knew I was right! The feeling was so strong it wasn't a dream.Up there, that gentle green sea... peace." Buaku

Buaku climes it instinctively and reaches inside the stargate

The stargate activates

"Neither shame, nor anger, nor pain, nor bitterness."Buaku

and Greenpeace Crolis(/Chloris) appears

A mysterious green-skinned girl with wings (and I found out from the wiki: who's content as long as she's in a place with plenty of light. She was originally developed to counteract the bacteria-laden smog that covers the Earth: a humanoid "air purifier.") Can't wait to check out the rest of this series!